Today the Louisville Free Public Library hosted a Meet The Legislator meeting at the Middletown Branch. In the wake of yet another horrific school shooting, the bravery of students and families and Parkland, Florida, and a heartfelt talk with my crying daughter about her fear of school shootings, I wanted to ask representative Jason Nemes about his promotion of his "pro-life" status while embracing the endorsement of the NRA.

Unfortunately, the moderator folded my question up and handed it to Jason to "answer later". So I interrupted and asked my question directly.

I wanted to know what he would do to push back on the toxic message and agenda promoted by the NRA and if he would reject their endorsement in the future.

He said that he "didn't always agree with the NRA" but said he would NOT reject their endorsement in the future. He then went on a tangent blaming gun violence on the breakdown of the family and single parent family households, saying "70% of children are born out of wedlock." (Jacob Ryan of KYCIR, who was doing a presentation at the library, fact checked Nemes and indicated his numbers were off by 30%).

As we watch the brave students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas and elsewhere call out our politicians for their over two decades of inaction on gun violence, you have to wonder why adult "pro-life" politicians like Jason Nemes, Matt Bevin, and others are afraid to reject the endorsement of an organization that pushes a message that an arsenal of military style guns and the willingness to use them is the measure of a true patriot. Why do they continue to cater to an NRA that tells them to reject any and every common sense gun law that could help research, reduce, or prevent gun violence and pushes them to give gun makers and sellers protections far greater than most industries have? Do they believe, like the NRA, that dozens of dead school children are simply the price we pay for "freedom"?

It's time for these men who claim to be "pro-life" to look at the children dying around them and stop being craven lackeys for the National Rife Association. ​

A political party owned by the gun lobby who makes sure that their campaign appearances celebrate a toxic macho culture where a gun is the ultimate solution to anyone who dares cross you, including your government

A "pro-family" political party that will use a few violent acts by immigrants as justification for threatening immigrants, separating families in the most cruel of ways, and spending millions on a useless wall, but can't do a damned thing when one person with a semi-automatic weapon can kill and injure dozens at a time

A political party that is slow to denounce the many white supremacists or address their own views that appeal to these individuals

A political party who claims to be "pro-life" that will do everything in their power to eliminate constitutionally protection abortion services, but says "there's nothing that can be done" when it comes to gun violence

A president who brags about sexual assault and feels as though anything he wants to do is okay

A president who elevates men who abuse their wives to high positions and then defends them when they're forced out

A president, Senate Majority Leader, and Kentucky Governor who, like their party for over 20 years, can offer nothing but "thoughts and prayers" as thousands of Americans are gunned down each year, saying the right to kill with a gun is more important than protecting the country's children

Take a look at the campaign videos, social media feeds, and campaign appearances of Republicans like Matt Bevin and the rhetoric of the NRA that owns them. Look at the way in which guns are fetishized by our politicians and the media that pushes their agenda. Guns are seen as equalizers, symbols of personal power, patriotic, and the best way to make sure nobody gets one over on you.

And the best part for future mass shooters is that our GOP led gun culture ensures that they will have plenty of access to guns and ammo to brutalize many more the next time.

"Every student, no matter their family background, deserves to learn in the environment that best meets their needs. Scholarship Tax Credits will help expand school choice to all." -- Catholic Conference of Kentucky Ad promoting HB 134 and SB 36

Groups like EdChoice Kentucky and the Catholic Conference of Kentucky have been pushing hard for HB134 and SB 36, bills that would provide scholarship tax credits for tuition assistance. The message is that these scholarships will assist ALL in getting the education that meets their needs.

​House Bill 134 and Senate Bill 36 will enact a Scholarship Tax Credit program for Kentucky, providing more educational choices for low and middle income families and students with special needs. As a constituent in your district, I am writing to ask you to co-sponsor this important legislation.

House Bill 134 and Senate Bill 36 will establish a nonrefundable tax credit for individuals and businesses who donate to fund needs based scholarships for Kentucky families. These scholarships help families afford the cost of K-12 nonpublic school tuition or other important educational services.

Please support equal educational opportunities for all Kentucky students by co-sponsoring House Bill 134 and Senate Bill 36.

Andrew Vandiver, an associate director at the Catholic Conference of Kentucky has pointed to Florida's tax scholarships as an example of success. Florida's tax scholarship credit program indicates the amount awarded to a child cannot exceed $5,886 a year. The tuition and fees for DeSales are $13,281. Now I'm just a lowly public school graduate who barely passed my AP Calculus exam, but my iPhone is pretty sure that $13,281 - $5886 leaves $7395 for the parents who would like to chose DeSales for their child. Is that an amount that any poor parent can afford without other assistance?

Are DeSales and other Catholic schools really concerned about educating minority students? According to the National Center for Education statistics, DeSales had 12 black, 2 Asian, and 4 Hispanic children in a school of 319 students in 2015-2016. If you're doing the math, over 94% of the population is white.

By contrast, Kentucky's state report card for the 2015-2016 school year shows that JCPS was 46.6% white, 36.1% African American, 9.6% Hispanic, 3.8% Asian, .1% Native American, .1% Native Hawaiian, and 4.8% two or more races.

This isn't true just at DeSales. Here's a look at the data at other Louisville private high schools:

If Florida is our model, it's clear that all of these popular private school choices will still be out of reach for poor students, and even many middle class students without additional financial assistance.

So here are some questions for the Catholic Conference of Kentucky and the church organizations and legislators around Kentucky that are pushing this bill as being a solution for underprivileged and under-served kids in our public schools:

If scholarships provided under this bill fail to cover the full amount of all private schools, what are you going to do to fill in the gaps so all can attend your schools?

If you fail to provide additional scholarships to fill in gaps between the scholarship tax credit scholarships and the actual tuition, is it fair to say you're being disingenuous in pushing this bill as providing help to poor children?

What efforts will your schools make to recruit, keep, and maintain ALL minority students that are currently in public schools regardless of their current academic or athletic achievement?

Will you provide breakdowns of the scholarships received by the families you're currently using to advertise your cause?

Will you truly make an effort to help shift the racial balance in your classrooms closer to the racial makeup of JCPS?

If you believe that "(e)very student, no matter their family background, deserves to learn in the environment that best meets their needs", how will you ensure this happens?

I've asked some of these questions of Andrew Vandiver and other supporters of these bills, but they don't seem to want to answer. I get it. I grew up Catholic and have relatives in Catholic schools. They're expensive, people like them for many reasons, and they are by and large good schools. Some extra money to attend them would be awesome for the parents who chose them. But having been born and raised Catholic, it troubles me to see my church using the poor as a way to sell a bill that appears designed more to help the middle and upper class who support the schools. I don't think it's unfair to ask these questions or demand answers to them. If the church sees diverting tax money away from our public schools and toward their schools as a better way for poor and minority students, they should show us how this is going to happen.

Over a decade ago when we were looking at where we were going to send our daughter to school, it is fair to say JCPS wasn't at the top of our mental list. I'd gone to Oldham County Schools, which many considered to be the top in the state at the time. My wife was a graduate of Catholic Schools. Both of us had our biases against JCPS schools. Like many in town, we believed kids were bused all over town, had teachers who were indifferent, and went to schools that were subpar compared to our own experiences.

But we researched. We toured. We busted the myths. We chose JCPS. And despite challenges, we have not regretted it.

There seems to be a belief in our community that JCPS should run like a business. Most businesses take a lot of time to figure out who their primary customer is. As a parent at JCPS, I can tell you that my hope would be that the leadership of JCPS would focus on children and parents as their primary customers. As one consultant put it, "When deciding who is the customer, the focus should always be on the people using the product. They are the ones for whom value is being created and the reason why the market and the product exists."

Like many large businesses, JCPS’ leadership lost sight of who its primary customer was. I say this as an attendee at numerous school board meetings where none of our business community ever seems to be in attendance or request to speak. I've watched as parents, students, teachers, and staff have come before the board of education with concerns for both Donna Hargens and her predecessor, Sheldon Berman. I watched as they reacted passively to issues both big and small that JCPS needed to address. I kept in contact with parents and teachers who felt like the needs of the classroom weren't being addressed and feared retaliation if they spoke up. I watched as board leadership worked to minimize the feedback given in board meetings. I personally experienced signing up to speak at a meeting, sitting for almost four hours, and finding out that in violation of board policy, my right to speak was taken away without a vote of the board. It cannot be denied that the failures of Donna Hargens to focus on her primary customers are what led to the state coming in to audit JCPS. And it’s tough to say that she had a real focus on the issues that impact our least served communities given how unresponsive she was to concerns in schools with the greatest need.

And yet, Dr. Hargens seemed to be beloved by leaders in the community, many of whom were graduates of private schools, had children in private schools, or had deep ties to them. As Dr. Hargens and her Chief Business Officer pushed hard on an erroneous salary study that destroyed morale, our chamber of commerce praised her for ruffling feathers and "taking the harder road". When it was announced she was out, GLI, the mayor, and others praised her for her “leadership”, just as they had years earlier when Sheldon Berman was forced out.

What was it that all of these people saw in Dr. Hargens that the parents, students, teachers, and staff who are an actual part of JCPS did not. That’s an excellent question I don’t have an answer to.

But I do know what I have seen since Hargens' resignation. I've seen an interim Superintendent who is intent on listening. I've watched in board meetings and policy as he reacts to parent, student, and teacher concerns and asks tough questions. I've watched him talk to people to get their insight and feedback. I’ve seen his willingness to take action, not simply to shut up the person complaining. I've watched our own Board of Education make a commitment to hearing community voices by eliminating policies meant to silence comment within the board and by the public. This includes moving the portion of the meeting dedicated to hearing the community to the beginning, rather than to the end of their often lengthy meetings. I've heard from teachers, principals, and fellow parents that they're excited by Dr. Pollio's leadership and presence, and see him as a positive. As leaders of business, certainly you understand the value of improving employee morale and having a leader that internal and external customers believe in. For the first time, it feels like leadership is listening to us, the people who send our kids to JCPS, and who work for the school system. It feels like the good people who work at JCPS are not ashamed or afraid of their leadership and feel inspired to be better.

Know that when you label JCPS a "failure", "disaster", or any other pejorative term, you're making a judgement on over 100,000 community members who are your customers, employees, friends, and neighbors. We are the people who experience the good and the bad at JCPS directly each day, and OURS is the voice that needs to be listened to most closely as the primary external and internal customers of JCPS. Listening to the people you serve directly is what good businesses do, and it’s what, for the first time in over a decade, JCPS leadership is finally doing. If those on the outside wish to truly help JCPS, maybe listening to and including these same voices is where you should start.

​Whatsoever you do to the least of my people That you do unto me. -- "Whatsoever You Do" by Willard F. Jabusch, a Catholic hymn based on Matthew 25

I tend to think of people as good. I share a certain naive view that when people are doing awful things, that maybe they don't know better, or it was a simple mistake of the moment, or they've had some childhood trauma that has led them to behave the way they do.

But as I sat at the forum held by Phil Moffett and Ken Fleming on Thursday to discuss pensions, and reflected on what was happening I simply couldn't stomach it any more.

I was raised Catholic. I will not pretend to be a good Catholic, or a great Christian. I do not currently attend church. But I attended for years, and I listened and read the words of Jesus, and saw them lived through my parents, and in the people around me. What I learned from those lessons was what seems like common sense to me now, not just religious doctrine.

Love one another

Take care of one another

Look out for one another

Have empathy for and understanding of your fellow man

Help the poor, hungry, lonely, sick, and downtrodden

Know that you'll never be perfect, but that you should strive to be a good person each day

Lying is bad

Greed is bad

Selfishness is bad

Stealing is bad

Even if I'm no longer attending church regularly, these seem like good ideals to live by, and I strive to each day. These things were in the back of my head as my anger rose at what was happening.

These government workers expressed their concerns on a personal level. Yes, this would impact their wallet and their futures. But they also expressed the very real concerns about what happens to our education, police, fire, and other social services when these plans are rolled in. What happens if we have a mass exodus of experienced teachers retiring? What happens if the many state roles where a lifetime pension is the main recruitment tool suddenly lose that perk? What happens to recruitment in areas where Kentucky's youngest are at risk and there already aren't enough people to fill the slots, such as teaching and social work? How many will suffer?

As I watched teachers, firefighters, social workers, and cops express their fears for both their own futures, the future of their professions, and the future of Kentucky to Phil Moffett and Ken Fleming, I noticed that both men appeared to be there for the most Catholic of rituals, doing penance. Except instead of hearing what our state's workers had to say to go forth and sin no more, they merely took their lumps, gave a few cursory "I feel your pain" statements, and counted the minutes until they could say they did the least they could do. If you read between the lines of their answers (or lack thereof) to the questions and concerns raised, it was clear they were probably backing the plan, no matter what. Fleming mostly remained silent, but Moffett seemed to be angered by challenges to the plan, arguing with an FOP representative and then asking incredulously and condescendingly why these state workers hadn't done or said something until now.

Ignoring that many retirees HAD sounded the alarm years earlier, what kind of question is this? Our state employees have been victimized here. Is it customary to blame victims for the fault of others in Moffett's world?

Why didn't they raise the alarm sooner? Perhaps, because they, like me, had basic faith that people were working for them. That people in office and running pension funds would recognize the importance of state workers and act accordingly. Perhaps because, unlike many of the people in power in Frankfort and the people pulling their strings, they pursued a higher calling than greed and screwing over anyone necessary just so they could add some more digits to their income or the income of those who could keep them in power.

If you look at Bevin, Moffett, Hal Heiner and the many other Republican lawmakers that have supported this attack on our promise to state employees, you see no appreciation from them for the hard work they're doing. Bevin, Moffett, and Heiner have regularly attacked our state's professional educators in the most personal of ways. And now they've extended their attacks to the firefighters, police, social workers, corrections employees and others that keep Kentucky safe and secure. It's not hard to see that the end game is to weaken all of these institutions, reduce the tax money going to them, and redirect that money to businesses and other private interests. This is how so many of these men and their donors have made their fortunes. Attacking the least of us so that the wealthiest of us can see gain.

Bevin has cloaked himself in his Christianity as a sort of shield for his character, starting his inauguration with a prayer service that surrounded him with some of the most divisive pastors in the state. He has openly promoted "See You At The Pole" and "Year of the Bible" events in social media. He's even gone as far as to say pastors who criticized his empty "solution" for violence in Louisville were going to hell for doing so. Never mind that in the same meeting, Bevin broke a contract he signed for the facilities he used by closing the meeting to the press, lied about the vocal opposition he received in that meeting, and then tried to spin his intentions when it was clear that the residents and spiritual leaders in the area were offended by his suggestions. Indeed, Governor Bevin's reaction to any sort of criticism about how he treats those who are hurting, or have been offended by his actions is to spin and attack, not seek understanding or forgiveness.

I can only ascertain from these actions and the actions of the men and women who support Matt Bevin that this is because their faith and spirituality is for simply for show. It's a ticket into the connections their churches can bring them, and a way to make themselves feel better at night after they help the rich get richer and chip away at the livelihoods and safety nets that serve the poor and middle class. They can call themselves Christians if they like, but with their lack of empathy, compassion, and concern for all of their fellow man, I find it hard to call them good or decent people in the way that the Gospels of Jesus instruct.

No Governor Bevin, shame on you, your lawmaker friends, and your wealthy political puppetmasters for even making it necessary. Shame on you for your attacks on the government employees that educate, protect, and make the state stronger. Shame on you for your lack of empathy, caring, and concern for anyone who doesn't support you or can't further your own selfish interests. And shame on you for ramming a 505 page plan written by and crafted for anti-government out of state interests down the throats of the entire state and becoming indignant when people rise up to let you know that this plan will hurt them, the state, and the professions they love.

Imagine two car companies. We’ll call the first company Main Street Motors. The second we’ll call Our Mother Of Blessed Automobiles (MOBA).

Main Street Motors has a mission. They will make the best cars they can out of the raw materials they are given, no matter the supplier. Main Street has parts suppliers from all over the world. There is a problem though. Few of these parts are standard. Some of them are raw material that has been allowed to age for a few years without ever being shaped into anything. Others are parts that have been moved from warehouse to warehouse without much care in shipping or handling. Some are parts from overseas, created by people who couldn’t speak the language and could not prepare them to American standards. Some parts have been damaged, abused, and treated without care. Some parts have no dedicated craftsman to mold them. Some parts are simply left with other parts most of the day in hopes they’ll simply shape themselves. That’s not to say some parts at Main Street Motors aren’t great, developed and crafted from great raw stock with no expense spared to shape them before they even get to Main Street Motors. But at Main Street Motors, no part can be turned away, and their workers do their best to turn all of those parts into productive, functioning automobiles.

Our Mother Of Blessed Automobiles also has a mission to build the best cars. But unlike Market Street Motors, they won’t take just any part. Their parts suppliers need to come to the table with a yearly check to prove they’re serious about committing to help MOBA craft their parts into great cars. Most of the parts that reach MOBA have already spent four or five years being crafted and molded in demanding and well maintained factories with one and usually two or more craftsmen there to care for and shape them to exacting specifications. If a part gets too far out of specifications, MOBA can send that part and its suppliers on their way, often times that part winds up at Main Street Motors, who will accept it and try to craft the best car it can out of it. When Consumer Reports comes to put the cars through their paces and rank them, Main Street Motors often comes in ranked behind MOBA. In fact, in its most recent Auto Issue, Consumer Reports said:

“Main Street Motors often produces some fine automobiles, but as a whole, when compared to Mother of Blessed Automobiles, Main Street Motors often falls short. Their commitment to working with any part that comes through their door keeps them from achieving the high performance of MOBA across the board. For that reason, MOBA seems superior in our judgement. In fact, our only real issue with MOBA is that the vast majority of their cars, with the exception of sports cars, only come in white, but that’s a minor concern for most luxury buyers.”

Kentucky State Representative and Education Committee member Phil Moffett once said in the Courier Journal that “our public school system is operating on a failed business model.” Yes Phil, if we look at public schools as a company like Main Street Motors above, we might want to invest our money elsewhere. But therein lies the problem. Public schools are not businesses. Unlike Private Schools, they cannot control their inputs. By law they must take everyone. That includes not just middle and upper class kids, but the poor, the homeless, the abused, the kids who do not know the language, the kids from broken homes, the kids in violent neighborhoods, and the kids without parents. Public schools do this, and their teachers, staff, and administrators are dedicated to helping them ALL achieve.

If our lawmakers in Frankfort want to help our children in public schools perform better, they should take a hard look at all factors that play into a child’s education, not just the portion of the day they’re in public schools. And rather than continue to bash our state’s educators, they should partner with them to learn how we can better serve and educate all children, not just the privileged few.

If you look at the boards of many educational non-profits and state agencies and their donor rolls, you see a lot of wealthy and powerful executives at local companies, and in many cases, other non-profits tied to well known people like Bill Gates, the Waltons, and others.

There are many people who have never stepped foot inside a classroom as a teacher who are wielding tremendous influence over education.

I'm curious how many of these same men and women look for teachers, principals, and superintendents to fill their own boardrooms. What would Bill Gates say when he was CEO of Microsoft if a history teacher came to him and said, "your products are terrible, you don't know what you're doing, you're not innovative enough, and I'm just the person to fix it"?

Imagine a sociology teacher coming into a Walmart and telling anyone from the store manager to the CEO that they needed to completely change their business model, the way they trained, or the way they paid their employees? Or maybe they should open a completely separate "charter" Walmart store to compete with their other Walmarts for business.

Educators of our children go to school for many years, and they go back for more once they become teachers. They are trained in ideas and concepts that work and they gain valuable classroom experience that helps them shape and improve their work even more. Many of them can speak to you about what does and doesn't work and how education can be fixed. I have to imagine it's not enjoyable when a billionaire with no educational experience funds policies and initiatives that have you spinning your wheels or becoming part of their grand experiment, especially if you're in a building that's the victim of years of neglect, using outdated materials, teaching kids who barely have two cents to rub together.

If Bill and Melinda Gates, the Waltons, or any number of our wealthy local benefactors want to put money into education, great. But let the educators take that money and decide how they can best spend it. Stop throwing money toward experiments, or worse, politicized attacks on our educational system under guise of educational improvement.

And maybe throw a teacher or two in your corporate boardrooms, and get a feel for what it's like when someone who isn't making a 7 figure plus income has ideas and thoughts on how you should run things.

The JCPS Board of Education voted 6 to 1 to approve moving forward with a Males of Color Academy. It was good to see so many people come out in support of education, and I hope that many of these same individuals will make it a point to attend future board meetings and both support and hold the Board of Education accountable not just for this academy, but for all schools.

While I support any efforts to improve learning in Jefferson County, there are some aspects of the Males of Color Academy that concern me and there are many concerns, questions, and issues I hope can be addressed by JCPS.

REGARDING THE RFP PROCESS

It seems clear that JCPS was seeking to emulate the Carter G Woodson Academy in Lexington for the Males of Color Academy. Rosz Akins was included in several board meetings to discuss the school, and the proposal for the DuBois Academy from August of 2016 made it clear that the board wished to mimic the program. That being the case, why did JCPS issue an RFP that asked for the following: "The intent is to explore all innovative approaches/designs that have a track record and evidence of success in meeting the needs of males of color including the inclusion of ethnic studies. The design would go through the magnet schools process. This is the first step -- exploration and engagement and then design."

I reviewed several RFPs from JCPS and each one was scored on a 100 point scale with cost being a varied percentage of the bid. Why was this RFP on a 425 point scale, and why was cost weighted at 140 points, almost 3 times any of the other 11 scores?

The proposals provided by TNTP and The Eagle Academy are professionally done and formatted, and both indicate experience in building several schools and/or consulting with multiple outside agencies about education. TNTP also provides biographies of multiple experienced consultants that work with them. The SNIKA proposal appears to be the work of one individual, is haphazardly arranged, and full of typos, grammar errors, citation problems, and at least one glaring factual error. SNIKA's experience primarily is focused on a single school. Given all of this, how did SNIKA score a 27.40 out of 30 on the "Experience/qualifications/capacity of the offeror" portion of the scoring process, while Eagle Academy scored a 24.60, and TNTP scored 23.40?

There are several other areas where TNTP and the Eagle Academy would appear to have a better or equal approach with SNIKA, yet in only one of the 8 groupings of scores does either of the other two have a score better than SNIKA. Why?

Who scored the proposals, what criteria they used to score each, and how the criteria were arrived at.

Why would a company submit, and JCPS accept, a proposal to create a new school dedicated to academic excellence and professional behavior that is full of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.

If the desire was to replicate Carter G Woodson Academy, could it not have been done cheaper via consultation with the school itself via an arrangement with Fayette County Public Schools and a project manager from Jefferson County Public Schools?

QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS ABOUT THE MALES OF COLOR ACADEMY ITSELF

What data do we have that shows student success is driven by Carter G Woodson Academy and not by other factors?

How will we track data to determine if the Males of Color Academy is improving educational outcomes in Jefferson County? Will we be tracking demographics at a detailed enough level to examine the paths and success of students in the Males Of Color Academy vs those who attend other schools?

Several "non-negotiables" were mentioned in August of 2016 for this school, including it not having a high concentration of poverty, a commitment for parents to Saturday training, and mandatory Saturdays. Are these still on the table?

Ms Akins mentioned that students in Carter Woodson who joined after sixth grade had a harder time. What are elementary schools in Lexington doing right that middle schools are not in preparing children to transition to the rigor and rigidness of CGWA? How will we replicate that here?

Ms Akins indicated that some students left Carter Woodson early to return to, in her words, “the mediocrity”. What are we going to do to ensure that our intent is not to consider the new academy an elite oasis from “mediocrity”, but rather to use this academy to develop programs and support that can be used in ALL schools? If so, what is our plan for doing so?

Why are only Christian churches included in the Supplemental program. It’s easy for Ms Akins to say that there is no religious component to this program, but having the supplemental programs at churches potentially sends a negative or non-inclusive message to the children and parents who do not attend those churches. Is there any consideration of other religious institutions or non religious community outreach programs?

How will JCPS ensure that all students are given a shot to get into the academy? How will they help kids who may not have a stable home life, parents, or someone advocating for them apply and succeed at the new academy?

What is our plan going forward? How will we ensure that we reach more at risk kids, and what other types of programs are in the pipeline for students who may not thrive at a place like the Males of Color Academy?

What factors will establish if this academy is a success or failure? What measurements will we use and how will we baseline these measurements and compare them to other approaches?

It is my sincere hope that the Males of Color Academy succeed in a way that helps lift up all students. I will be monitoring developments closely and supporting its success any way that I can. I am hopeful that as it moves forward, people remain behind it and more importantly, that the work done improve education for the students inside the academy and eventually trickle down to those who are not.

The Males of Color Academy comes up for a vote at this week's board meeting. Prior to forming this academy, a Fayette County Schools administrator, Rosz Akins, was brought in to discuss the academy that Fayette County Schools had created, the Carter G Woodson Academy. When JCPS put out an RFP for a project manager of this academy, SNIKA Inc., a company founded by Rosz Akins was the low bid, coming in at $125,000. This was far less than the other two competing bids.

The proposal, obtained from a WDRB news story, discusses how the academy will teach students to be "Well Spoken" and "Well Prepared". The proposal itself represents neither of these principles. It looks like a very lengthy first draft, with numerous typos, grammatical errors, and shifts in tone and style of presentation. Citations of sources for several of the claims made in the presentation are seldom given, and there is at least one apparent falsehood (page 36) about Indiana using 3rd grade reading scores to predict the need for prisons.

I'm still curious how this proposal moved forward and why it was necessary to give $125,000 to a Fayette County Public School employee when it seems as though both Fayette and Jefferson County could have worked together to share the same information for far less money. I'm also curious if the Fayette County Public School taxpayers know that materials and programs developed by their school system have been appropriated by a private company to win a contract at Jefferson County Public Schools. That would seem to be a conflict of interest.

JCPS is to vote on moving forward with the Males of Color this Tuesday.

Dr Donna Hargens is out at JCPS effective 7/1/17 per tonight's board meeting.

Chris Brady's statement as board chair is as follows:

The Jefferson County Board of Education and Dr. Donna Hargens, Superintendent of the Jefferson County public Schools (JCPS), today announced that the Superintendent will step down from her position, effective July 1, 2017. Although Dr. Hargens regrets that her approach to implementing the Strategic Plan for JCPS no longer aligns with the Board's approach, she is grateful for the experience of having provided leadership for the school district for the past six years.

The Board thanks Dr. Hargens for her service to JCPS and for guiding the district through its strategic planning process. The Board and the Superintendent believe it is in the best interest of employees and students to have a new leader guide the district through implementing the strategic plan. Since 2011, JCPS increased its graduation rate to 80.1 percent, doubled its College and Career Readiness rate, increased overall reading and math for every subgroup, and increased the number of students taking Advanced Placement classes. While the district has moved forward during the past six years, the Board believes that the district must accelerate the pace of achievement.

The Board is committed to its vision that all JCPS students graduate prepared, empowered, and inspired to reach their full potential as thoughtful, responsible citizens of our diverse, shared world. There is much work to be done. With the collective commitment of the Board, parents, teachers, and administrators across the district, JCPS can and will reach its goals. The Board now intends to move forward with a sense of urgency to find a successor to the Superintendent, and to take actions that will continue to improve the education that it provides for all children of Jefferson County.

A copy of Dr. Hargens' revised contract (scanned from a copy provided at the meeting) is below.